Page:The Truth about China and Japan - Weale - 1919.djvu/133

 stipulating that the controlling agency should be as in other countries the Treasury or Ministry of Finance, raised a terrible outcry against anything being done at all and then let the matter drop—with the result that to-day the Maritime Customs control, which might have been rightly placed, is under separate little government offices hidden away in an obscure lane.

These matters—and what they directly signify—are of the highest importance. For the two ministries on which China's future largely depends, because they are the interpreters of the civilization and organization which the breakdown of the Confucian state-system has brought into the country, are simply the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Communications. Virtually all the politico-financial business arising out of foreign intercourse is in their hands; and only indirectly in the hands of the Chinese Foreign Office. Long ago it should have been the aim of all the liberal Powers to place under the roofs of these two